Tag Archives: Department of Justice

Donald Trump has already left his mark on the federal judiciary through numerous selections for the bench. But he also has the opportunity to agitate for another lasting judicial reform: the breakup of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The 9th Circuit, which includes Nevada, is by far the largest of the 13 federal appellate courts, covering nine Western states and two Pacific island territories. It has 29 active judges and 20 senior jurists, dwarfing any other appeals court.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute note, “The 9th Circuit has an astonishing backlog, accounting for nearly a third of all pending federal appeals. It takes an average of 13 months to decide a case, the longest of any circuit and almost five months more than the national average.”

Common sense would dictate that court be split into two or more manageable districts. But politics dominates the issue. The 9th Circuit is the nation’s most liberal appellate court, and Democrats are wary of deconsolidation. But it makes little sense to defend the status quo on political grounds if the result is a delay in the administration of justice for those involved in litigation.

Early last year, Arizona’s U.S. senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, both Republicans, offered a proposal to spin off a new court to include Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Washington and Alaska. The legislation was similar to a 2004 measure that passed the House but died in the upper chamber.

Congress should again review the McCain-Flake proposal. The only issue at hand should be whether the current configuration of the 9th Circuit promotes efficiency and timely justice for the residents of the Western states. The answer seems abundantly clear.

Judicial Watch announced that the Justice Department refuses to disclose the talking points developed by the Obama Justice Department to help it respond to press inquiries about the controversial June 27, 2016, tarmac meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

The Justice Department heavily redacted the documents under Exemption b (5), which allows agencies to withhold draft or deliberative process material. The blacked-out material centers around talking points drafted and used by Justice to respond to press inquiries about the Lynch-Clinton meeting.

The attorneys general of New York and California are on the warpath. They’re fed up with dissent over the science and politics of global warming, and they’re ready to investigate the liars. California’s Kamala Harris and New York’s Eric Schneiderman have Exxon in their sights, and they’re trying to pry open the books to see whether the corporation properly warned shareholders “about the risk to its business from climate change.” Not to be outdone, Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed that the federal Department of Justice has “discussed” the possibility of civil suits against the fossil-fuel industry. The smell of litigation is in the air.

Some people are worried about little things like the “First Amendment,” “academic freedom,” and “scientific integrity.” Not me. I hate unscientific nonsense. So if Harris and Schneiderman are up for suing people who’ve made piles of cash peddling exaggerations and distortions, let’s roll out some test cases. I’ve got three ideas:

United States v. Al Gore: Ten years ago, the former vice president of the United States launched an extraordinarily lucrative career by selling climate doomsday. While promoting his Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, he made a shockingly false statement. He said that unless the world took “drastic measures” to reduce greenhouse gases, it would reach a “point of no return” in ten years. Continue reading →

The Obama administration has intervened in a landmark legal case brought by the American victims of Palestinian terrorists, urging the court to limit restitution for the victims out of fear that a sizable payout could collapse the Palestinian government, according to a copy of the court filing.

Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken argued in a filing to a New York City court that a hefty payout to the victims of Palestinian terror crimes could burden the Palestinian Authority (PA) and interfere in Obama administration efforts to foster peace in the region.

The victims are entitled to as much as $655 million from the PA following the conclusion of a decade-long lawsuit that exposed the Palestinian government’s role in supporting and paying for terror attacks in Israel. Continue reading →

Michael Horowitz, inspector general with the Department of Justice, in his office in Washington in August 2014. ( Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post, file)

The Obama administration has ruled that inspectors general have to get permission from the agency they’re monitoring for access to wiretaps, grand jury and credit information, a decision that immediately was denounced by watchdogs and lawmakers.

The Justice Department’s inspector general said the 58-page ruling released Thursday by the agency’s Office of Legal Counsel will undermine his ability to do his job rooting out fraud and corruption.

“Without such access, our office’s ability to conduct its work will be significantly impaired, and it will be more difficult for us to detect and deter waste, fraud, and abuse, and to protect taxpayer dollars,” Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said in a statement. Horowitz is chairman of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, a watchdog over the watchdogs that also sets policy. Continue reading →

The United States Department of Justice has a well-earned reputation for ruthlessness in its pursuit of lawbreakers, to the point where serious concerns have been raised they are trampling on the rights of the accused. It’s gotten to the point where politically motivated prosecutions, while not exactly commonplace are alarmingly frequent. One does not need be a juris doctor to recognize the system is sick: The way Alaska Republican Ted Stevens was railroaded out of the U.S. Senate on a train driven by the DOJ’s Public Integrity section is proof enough of that.

Though the Stevens case may be the best known it is not by far the last word on prosecutorial overreach and over-criminalization. Unfortunately these tactics have leaked out of DOJ into other departments of the executive branch – with embarrassing consequences for the United States and the cause of justice.

Consider the State Department, where Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland has been caught trying unsuccessfully to pressure the government of another country to issue a legal finding that would help her in her efforts to bring pressure on the government of yet another country. Continue reading →

It’s telling that the federal bribery indictment of New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez landed the same day the Justice Department announced it won’t prosecute IRS serial stonewaller Lois Lerner for contempt.

The net message isn’t subtle: Hold President Obama’s feet to the fire, as Menendez has done on Iran, and you’ll pay a price.

Keep quiet when it comes to implicating the White House, and Justice will play hands-off. Continue reading →

I have said it before — the Obama administration’s Internal Revenue Service is institutionally incapable of self-correction.

And, now it is even clearer that the Obama administration’s Department of Justice is incapable of holding accountable those responsible for a massive illegal targeting scheme. Even worse, its own involvement in the scandal not only means that it can’t properly investigate the IRS, it should instead be investigated for cooperating with the IRS in its campaign of censorship and oppression. Continue reading →

We write to you today to express our concerns that Loretta Lynch, the President’s nominee for attorney general of the United States, and prosecutors in her employ in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, may have violated the rights of crime victims while making plea deals with defendants in so-called “white collar” cases. We believe that this is emblematic of a larger problem – to wit, the failure of the executive branch to enforce laws as written, and indeed the deliberate circumvention of the laws as written.

The issue is of respect for the law. For example, under federal sentencing law, specifically the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act, restitution is “mandatory” as to defendants who are sentenced for certain designated crimes. The statute, 18 U.S.C. 3663A(a)(1) begins, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law….” a defendant who is convicted of certain crimes must have a sentence of restitution imposed. In Dolan v. United States, 560 U.S. 605, the Supreme Court held in 2010 that sentencing errors or omissions that result in a failure to award restitution may later be corrected, so holding because Congress made its intent clear when it used that language, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law.” But it appears to be the pattern and practice in the Eastern District to allow cooperators to keep the money they’ve pled guilty to stealing, in exchange for “good” cooperation. Continue reading →

Add another Article III federal judge to the lengthening list of those fed up with the lying and abuses by our “now ironically named Department of Justice.” Senior US District Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy in New York just lambasted Assistant US Attorney Stanley J. Okula from Preet Bharara’s office for lying to the court and advised that he bring a supervisor with him to court from now on.

The judge was livid, and he began the December 5th hearing with great clarity:

“Mr. Okula, I think I should start with something. On the front hall of the Department of Justice is engraved the whole section of United States against Berger about how the job of the Justice Department is to see that justice is done. Justice is founded in truth. Continue reading →

With increasing regularity, Louisiana mother Lakisha Fuselier was leaving work early to deal with her second-grader, Albert.

Albert, now 9, has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and the public elementary school he attended in St. Martin Parish struggled to meet his needs. So when his mother learned he might be eligible for Louisiana’s school choice program, she applied. He got in.

Albert is in his second year at Holy Family Catholic School in Lafayette, La. He’s doing so well, his two sisters joined him.

Fuselier tells us the public schools her children attended weren’t awful. They weren’t derelict. They weren’t unsafe. But they were big. The teachers didn’t really know the students. They didn’t have the patience to work with Albert. Continue reading →

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Frontiers of Freedom, founded in 1995 by U.S. Senator Malcolm Wallop, is an educational foundation whose mission is to promote the principles of individual freedom, peace through strength, limited government, ...